I had the great pleasure to interview one of adland's greats, Dave Trott, the creative director of Chick Smith Trott. To mix thing up a bit, I interviewed him on Twitter, which meant that his answers needed to be 140 characters of less. I saw Adweek's Brian Morrissey do this a few times on his Twitter stream, so I thought I'd give it a try. I think it went pretty well. You can judge for yourself:

Who has been the most influential person in your life?I could list loads, but to keep it short John Webster. John looked at what everyone else was doing to see what to be different to, what to do the opposite of, what conventions to break.

Tell us about everything you know about Paul Arden in 140 characters.It was better to be wrong and interesting than right and dull. Safe, boring and risk-free were a waste of one's time on the planet..

Heard you are a big fan of Helmut Krone. In the age of realtime everything, blogs and such, can unsung heroes still exist?You define yourself by your heroes. You take a little bit from everyone you admire and the way you put it together is what becomes you.East London. Self-taught. Successful. Are you the Alan Sugar of advertising? (Does he think West Ham won the World Cup?)Hurst, Peters, Moore: learn the lesson of 66. But as for Alan Sugar, I think our ads were better than Amstrad. You're fired.Today is (sadly) the 10th anniversary of the passing of David Ogilvy. What are your thoughts?When I trained in New York you were either Ogilvy (last of the Mad Men) or Bernbach (first of the new wave) personally I was Bernbach. Ok, so what differentiates the Mad Men from the new wave? Creativity vs the hard sell? The arrival of TV? Something else?Exactly, creativity started with Bernbach. Talking to people as if they were intelligent versus talking to them as if they weren't.

TED or Davos? TED every time: if you're creative it's better to be interesting and wrong than dull and right.

I’ve read your blog and can’t tell. “In order for us to win, someone else has to lose.”Was Maurice Saatchi right? Of course, how can you have a winner without a loser? They teach games at school where no one is allowed to win or lose, very useful.

I know you’re a fan of “small” What’s the best low-budget concept you’ve seen lately? There are two post-its side-by-side. They are peeled of until only one post it note is left. The VO says, "Get a test or you could lose a breast" and removes a post-it leaving just the one.

Last night, Amazon.com announced the intent to purchase hot ecommerce start-up Zappos for 10 million Amazon shares (or around $807 million). Wow, right? But, why am I writign about it?

Zappos is a unique kind of company. One that truly puts customers first and considers itself a customer service company and a product manufacturer second. They sell shoes, btw. As I write this, 1,025,349 people are following Zappos on Twitter, for example. As I've mentioned in 5C's on using Twitter for business, it takes something special for people to want to follow a company, and it is a testament to the truly personal management style of the Zappos team. Zappos has always understood the importance of having a customer obsession and the value that brings to their business. In acquiring Zappos, Amazon is acknowledging the competitive advantage of a custmer-centric approach, and one would expect them to integrate Zappos's approach into the Amazon business.

The other very cool thing about this news is the video Amazon founder Jeff Bezos sent to the Zappos staff. In it, he traces the history of Amazon and gives his short-list of everything he's learned in business:

1. Obsess over customers2. Invent3. Think long term4. It's Always Day One

These past few months have been some of the busiest and most wonderful times of my life. Work has always kept me on the move, but I don't think anything really prepares you for what happens when you have your first child. Julia is a wonder, and K and I feel blessed.

But the truth is that it has not left me with much time to blog. I have a bunch of draft posts, several "must blog this" notes, email that I've sent to myself (yes, I send myself email), along with links and other silly stuff that I'd like to be sharing with you here. However, I just don't have the time at the moment.

So, for the first time since I started blogging way back in 2001, I'm going to take a (very) short break. In the meantime, you can follow me on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr (amongst others) or meet me at the pub.